AGILE TRAINING ~ CONSULTANCY ~ COACHING

How many projects have you worked on where the overall goal seems unclear, vague or just lost in the myths of time and space? Can this happen in agile teams? Well unfortunately the answer is very often yes! In fact teams doing Scrum are perhaps more guilty of this than those using more conventional project management techniques such as Prince 2. Scrum is often misunderstood and poorly implemented and in the race to start developing code and producing deliverable's the overall goal gets missed. However every Scrum project SHOULD have a Product Vision, It's one of the must have artifacts I list in my  The ten must do's of Scrum Who sets the Product Vision? The Product Owner is responsible for the overall success of the project and they should be responsible What makes a good Product Vision? The vision statement should be clear, concise and importantly brief! It's purpose is to align the entire team and stakeholders so that everybody understands the goal -...

Everybody needs to have goals these days…. Whether you want to or not! It could be as part of an appraisal process or a team at work… Often these are medium to long term aspirations which nobody ever checks the progress of! However, For those that read my The Ten must do’s of Scrum one of the artefacts I list is the Sprint Goal This is one of those often overlooked aspects of doing Scrum but like time boxing it’s an excellent way to keep things targeted. Who sets the sprint goal? Ideally the goal of the iteration should be set by the product owner ( PO), It’s their opportunity to set the agenda and to ensure that everyone understands what the focus of the sprint is. It’s also the responsibility of the scrum team to commit to the goal or if the goal is unobtainable within a single iteration to explain this to the PO. In determining if a goal is achievable the final say is with the scrum team and the PO should be respectful of their opinion (That doesn’t mean that the PO should...

It's a bit risky having a ten of anything these days.... There was a time when a title like the 'Top ten movies' or 'Top ten reasons your career is going wrong' would have sold, but recently I've noticed a definite trend towards the number five '5 Must have's on your CV' if you don't believe me go check out LinkedIn you'll be sure to find a top 5 story but never a top 10.... It seems a little like dumbing down to me! However if you're doing Scrum there is in my opinion 10 must do's! actually perhaps 11 or 12. Five of these are meetings (sometimes given the rather grand title of ceremonies) and six are artefacts. So, What are the five meetings: 1. Sprint Planning - Takes place at the start of each sprint, The team meet with the product owner to discuss the next set of highest priority items from the 'Product backlog'. The result of this meeting is a 'Sprint Backlog' which contains the stories broken down...